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Inkscape is a free, platform independent tool to work on vector graphics like svgs. Additionally it has got good commandline batch processing facilities which makes it the tool of choice for programmers.

How?
1. Save the script as EpsToSvg.tcl.
2. Open the script in an editor and adapt the pathToInkscape. Save.
3. Open a command shell and cd to the directory where your eps files are located.
4. Then run tclkitsh EpsToSvg.tcl.

Svg to Pdf

To convert a lot of svg files to pdf files at once, you can use tclkitsh and this script:

Inkscape Without Gui

There is the additional commandline parameter -z or --without-gui which prevents that Inkscape opens a window when using with commandline only. Pitily, it seems that most of the --verbcommands do not work without gui. It’s been reported as bug in 2011 but not fixed until at least 2017.

Every developer who has worked for some time on Linux or another Un*x system will miss the bash, some of the other unix tools like find, cat, grep and awk and a decent console bitterly.

There are several ways how to get some of the unix power back to windows.

Cygwin. It is sometimes a bit complicated to install and handle and there are often problems with line endings. I have used this but never was really totally content.

MinGW, MSYS and MSYS2. I have never used them and cannot tell much about them.

Git-Bash and ConEmu. Lately I have detetcted these tools and it seems they are working quite well. In this post, I’ll go a bit deeper on them. Git-Bash is a version of mingw32, as far as I know.

Git Bash

Git is a well known source control system. And its installation kit for windows contains bash, awk, grep, find and several other unix tools. So even if you don’t want to use git on your windows machine, you can install this package. It is free software.

ConEmu

ConEmu is a very fine terminal emulator. Download the ConEmu portable package. It’s got dozens of settings and it can be used for any consoles on windows, not only the bash. E.g. it can be used with the ordinary cmd, too.

Here is how to install it:

Download the portable version of ConEmu.

Extract it beneath the Git directory, to C:/tools/ConEmu.

Run ConEmu.exe or ConEmu64.exe, depending on your system. Delete the other one.

Select as settings location C:/tools/ConEmu/ConEmu.xml

As startup task select {Bash::Git bash}.

Done. Now you’ve got a nice looking console window with your git-bash inside. And for the occasional case you still need a cmd console, you can start this also inside ConEmu.

And the best, you have all these things in the console you’ve missed your whole life:

You can copy text to the clipboard by just marking it.

You can insert text by typing Ctrl-v. Yes, really. No need to Alt-Space-Edit-Paste.

You can resize even the width of the window by dragging at the corner. Shocking.

ConEmu remembers its position and size and reopens at the previous place

There are dozens of other settings and possibilities for configuration with which you can play if you’d like to.

As a software developer who does UI, you’ll sometimes need to see exactly what is shown on your screen. You need to see pixels. You need to see pixels in large.

Mark Russinovich has built a tool called Zoomit.exe with which you can zoom into the screen fast.

It’s got these additional features:
* From Vista on, it does even live zoom.
* You can draw lines, straight lines, rectangles, ellipses.
* You can write text.
* The tool has been built as support for presentations, so it’s got a break function.